by Karen Jonson
Another unwritten rule, which I personally found difficult to abide by, was to get up every morning at 6:00. Swamiji said this helped prevent sloth. My best effort was 7:00. But I suffered from guilt over this lapse. One day when he came to The Girls’ House, I decided to seek his advice.
“Swamiji, I’m having a hard time getting up at six. What should I do?”
“What time do you wake up?”
“At seven.”
“That’s okay,” he said matter-of-factly with an approving tilt of his head.
I couldn’t believe it was that easy to get permission to break one of his rules. From that day on, I slept happily and guilt-free until seven o’clock.
Most of Swamiji’s rules were nearly impossible to follow, but that did not stop him from trying. Over and over, in multiple tirades over the years, he told us we were the luckiest people on the planet because we lived in his ashram, and if we didn’t sincerely follow his rules we were committing a grave disservice to him, to God, and to our soul, and wasting a precious opportunity to achieve God realization in this lifetime.
I struggled for years to follow all of his rules and always felt lacking in my ability to do so perfectly.
26
The Ladies in Orange
Holier Than Thou
THERE WAS AN ABSOLUTE HIERARCHY in the ashram, with Swamiji at the top and his sanyasi preachers directly below him.
The preachers were the primary upholders of his rules. As sanyasis, they had ostensibly “given up their lives” to serve God and the guru full-time. They were supposedly no longer engaged in “worldly activities” of any sort. Swamiji told us his preachers were “examples of dedication and devotion” for the rest of us and we were to show them the utmost respect—no matter what. In particular, we could not talk back to or argue with them without incurring the guru’s wrath.
Swamiji’s twenty-ninth rule for living in the ashram was directed to them: “A sanyasi sets the example of renunciation, devotion, discipline and loving-devotional-humbleness for others. He must be aware of that, and maintain it in his behavior.” I think most of them struggled with this rule.
When I moved to the ashram there were four preachers—all female and Western, ranging in age from twenty-two to thirty-seven. Swamiji had given them all their first Hindi names. But his guru renamed them in the early 2000s. They were Meera Devi (renamed Sureshwari Devi), Priya Dasi (renamed Prabhakari Devi), Hari Dasi (renamed Nikhileshwari Devi), and Krishna Dasi (renamed Janeshwari Devi). The fifth woman who wore orange was not a preacher. Originally named Ranjana (renamed Vishwambhari Devi, and whom I call “Vishi” in this book for short), she was Swamiji’s full-time servant. Later, he would ordain six other women, one Westerner (Christi), three Indians, and two men.
Each of the preachers had spent about two years studying Hindi, Sanskrit, scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagwatam, chanting, harmonium, drum, and memorizing a batch of prepared speeches.
When I moved to the ashram, all five women in orange lived together in a single rectangular room next to Swamiji’s bedroom. Their room contained five single beds, two desks, and a few end tables. They shared two closets. After the temple was built, they each got their own tiny bedroom near Swamiji’s suite. I was always jealous of their proximity to the guru. One night as I was walking past their bedroom the door opened and they all came out wearing thin cotton nightgowns that he had bought for them that day. Giggling like schoolgirls, they ran out of their bedroom and into his, closing the door behind them.
I knew it was a strange scene, but all I could feel at the time was jealousy. I learned later they all went into his bedroom every evening. I wondered what they did in there with him. At the time, I didn’t think too much about the polygamous overtones of the women’s relationship with Swamiji.
These women lived a highly unusual lifestyle, one that most people unaffiliated with the organization could not imagine. Even though I was a devotee and watched from a front-row seat, I still could not really imagine what it must be like to be in your early twenties and elevated to a status position that put you above everyone around you, including, in the case of one of the preachers, her own parents. Some devotees treated the preachers like they were princesses, catering to their every whim, including doing their laundry, buying them special things, or taking them shopping.
They typically exuded an air of superiority and entitlement, and enforced Swamiji’s edict to treat them as special. One devotee told me that to be on the safe side she treated them all “as if they have come directly from the divine world.”
The preachers stood out from the regular devotees, because they dressed head-to-toe in orange like the guru, from their saris to their socks to their jackets and even their shoes. Orange is one of the colors that represents renunciation in Hinduism. However, while wearing orange is common for Indians, it is not so for Westerners. After traveling on a plane for the first time dressed in orange, one of the preachers said, “I felt like a gigantic carrot.” Also, like Swamiji, the preachers wore tilaks on their foreheads and gold and black beaded necklaces.
Their primary role was preaching around the U.S. When they weren’t preaching, they were engaged in various activities around the ashram. For example, Prabhakari worked on videos, and Nikhileshwari worked on the computer and baked bread.
With their monochrome costumes they definitely looked the part of renounced spiritual teachers—but they did not always act the part. For example, there was the day when Prabhakari came into the dining room, took one look at lunch, and said snidely, “Aren’t these just leftovers from last night?”
After spending three exhausting hours in the kitchen cooking lunch for sixty people, I couldn’t hide my irritation at her meanness. “We made a fresh dish, but it ran out. What else are we supposed to serve?”
Without missing a beat she straightened her spine and snapped, “You can’t talk to me like that. You have to show me respect.”
I made a mental note on that day not to respect her, but to avoid her.
When Swamiji was out of the ashram, the preachers were in charge, and their inter-personal power struggles and rivalries were out in the open. In the late 1990s, Swamiji announced he was stepping down from his role as president and appointing his oldest preacher, Sureshwari, in his stead. And Prabhakari would be the vice president. At first, some of the devotees rebelled against the new ashram leaders. Then one day Swamiji gathered us together for an “important meeting” and told us sternly: “You must treat anything Sureshwari and Prabhakari say as if it’s coming directly from me.”
We immediately felt the shift of power, especially from Prabhakari, who began inserting her will all over the ashram, on everything from construction projects to menu choices. She became a power monger to the point of misery for many devotees. My only saving grace was Sureshwari. When the going got rough, I knew I could go to her for some measure of protection from Prabhakari’s megalomania. However, Sureshwari was also suffering under Prabhakari’s power plays. Rumors swirled that the two regularly engaged in very un-sanyasi-like arguments, some even bordering on all-out “knock down, drag out fights,” one man who witnessed them fight told me.
The preachers were most definitely not divine beings, but they were experts at mythmaking—appearing on the surface to be a unified front, far higher in devotional accomplishment than the rest of us minions. But under the orange clothing they were all just human beings. Once I realized this, it was a relief. It allowed me to see their ministrations in perspective and take their attitudes in stride.
In the end, I did learn one important lesson from them that helped me navigate ashram life in the years ahead—the guru’s rules were made to be broken.
27
Missed Connections
Outside Looking In
SWAMIJI LIKED TO BE SURROUNDED BY female devotees, and when his preachers were not available he always found other female companionship.
He could always be assured of an adoring group of wo
men at The Girls’ House. In the early days, he visited on a regular basis. This turned into a misery for me, because I seemed to never be around when he showed up, which was usually at odd hours, like early in the morning or late at night. I was always either taking an early morning walk or working late in my office.
Once I’d return home, one or more of the women would break my heart by telling me about Swamiji’s recent visit to the house. They would retell the funny things he said or did, like the time he made one of the women dress up in various costumes that were being prepared for an upcoming celebration. The tales were always filled with laughter and swooning from the smitten women, all of whom seemed to savor the pain I was in. I took my missed connections with him personally. After all, we believed he knew everything, so he must have known when I wasn’t in the house. He also taught us everything that happened to us was the result of our karma. Clearly, my karma caused me to miss out on an abundance of fun times with my guru.
One evening the pain became unbearable. I was in the community kitchen after satsang preparing food for the next day. One of The Girls’ House residents came into the kitchen. “Swamiji was just at our house,” she chirped. My heart sunk. I’d missed him again.
“What did he do?” I asked, sick with the loss.
“Oh, my gosh, he was so funny. He went into everyone’s bedroom looking to see how many saris each of us owned. He started pulling saris off the hangers and giving them away. Then he wrapped me in a sari.”
As I walked home in the dark, I ruminated on my bad luck. I desperately needed a fun experience with Swamiji to lift my spirits. As I walked past the temple construction site in the dark, I heard laughter. I slowed my pace to try and figure out who was having such a grand old time. Then I heard Swamiji’s voice, followed by peals of girlish giggling. I looked toward the temple and could make out four or five figures in orange sitting on the temple’s front steps. I stood silently for a few minutes and realized Swamiji was there with his preachers, regaling them with funny stories.
I felt the sting of being an outsider looking in at his inner circle of women. My already depressed state darkened even more. I believed more than ever that I was not good enough to be one of the lucky devotees to receive entry into the guru’s intimate world. When I got to my bedroom the pain and isolation overwhelmed me. As I stood in front of my bathroom sink brushing my teeth, tears started flowing. Soon, I was crying loudly, with jagged sobs that ripped at my heart and stomach. I dropped to the floor and wept until all my energy was exhausted.
My head ached as I got up from the floor, took a shower, and got into bed—lonelier and more dejected than I’d ever felt in my life.
28
“One Big Family”
Big Fish in a Little Pond
SWAMIJI OFTEN TOLD US that those living in the ashram were “one big family.”
This was a happy thought, but not the reality. We were just a large group of very different people from different backgrounds who had been brought together by a shared interest—worshipping God by serving our guru.
There were occasional group activities such as picking beans, canning peaches, preparing for a celebration, or having a picnic, where we would feel the bond of camaraderie for an afternoon or so. Once, Swamiji gathered us together after evening satsang to pick beans in the moonlight. We worked happily side by side under the guru’s approving gaze. When we were almost finished, he directed some of us to go fetch some homemade bread and lemonade. We ate our bread and butter by the light of the moon, feeling like the most blessed people in the whole world.
But day-to-day life was not a big kumbaya happy family existence, to say the least. None of us chose to live with each other. Swamiji alone determined who lived in the ashram and who did not. And he did not justify his decisions. The only comment he ever made about who he chose is: “People who live here have reached a particular level of devotion to God.”
Comments like this gave us all a certain cache among devotees who merely visited the ashram. Some of them treated us like we were special. Many of us believed we were. I definitely felt arrogant about my status as an ashram resident. But the reality was that most of us struggled mightily with our devotions, with one another, and with ourselves—wondering if we had made the right decision to move into such a cloistered, unnatural, high-pressure living situation.
One of the most frequent ongoing problems was the power struggle. The preachers were not the only people in the ashram who craved power. There were conflicts at every level—primarily turf battles over areas of responsibility such as the ashram kitchen or the construction department. Even the garden was not free of power plays. People wanted control, because being in charge of something usually gave them greater proximity to the guru—and that was the Holy Grail of living in the ashram. No position of authority was too small to give one person an edge over another. Whenever two devotees worked together, a struggle for dominance was inevitable. Most devotees wanted to be the queen or king bee, not merely a worker bee.
For me, living in the ashram required a Teflon exterior to deflect the constant barrage of spiteful barbs frequently shot behind my back. Either I didn’t clean up after myself well enough, or someone had a complaint about a meal I cooked, or a preacher chastised me for being able see my underwear through my skirt. I felt like there were always eyes on me; that someone was always poised to judge my actions or tell me how to do something differently. I sometimes joked about it, asking: “Is there a target painted on my back?”
The ashram was a prime example of the classic “big fish in a small pond” syndrome—and we had a small pond with far too many wanting to be the big fish.
29
Ashram Seva
Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t
AMONG THE CHALLENGES OF ASHRAM LIFE was doing seva under the rule of the devotees in charge.
The scriptures say that seva should not be a tool for making one feel superior or to receive rewards. Seva, like charity, should be done with a pure and undemanding heart. But in the ashram, most seva turned into a damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t stranglehold—and nowhere was this truer than in the ashram kitchen. It generated an exceptionally high degree of conflict because of the woman in charge. Swamiji gave Prabhakari’s mother, Sondra Tonnessen, the position of kitchen manager. In short order, she became a kitchen dictator. In fact, when it came to power mongering, the fruit had not fallen far from the tree. The worst part of her totalitarian management style was that she ruled from a core of incompetence.
“How could someone so incompetent be so arrogant?” another devotee once said.
Her ineptitude led to chronic problems that would turn even the most saintly person into a raving shrew. For example, she planned the menus on a weekly basis but would often change them at the last minute, sending the cooks into a tailspin. On a typical day, a rotating cooking team of two devotees would prepare both lunch and dinner for forty to sixty people. One person would be the lead cook, the other the helper. I started out as a helper, but out of sheer frustration, pushed to be a lead cook. The first meal I ever prepared was ripped apart by several devotees who complained to Sondra. It was an unpleasant experience, but it spurred me to work harder to prepare better meals.
I started out as just an average cook with only a few simple dishes in my repertoire. Of course, my former meat-based specialties were not going to fly in a vegetarian ashram. What’s more, Swamiji pushed us to try more Indian recipes, rather than the spaghetti, tacos, and veggie burgers we all craved. But we were all Westerners and did not know how to cook Indian food. I certainly did not know the first thing about Indian cuisine. I became interested after my first demonstration on using traditional Indian spices like mustard seeds and freshly grated ginger. I started shadowing the Indian cooks who visited Barsana Dham, and asked them to show me how to correctly spice each dish, when to add ingredients to a pot, and how to finish off a dish for maximum flavor.
They encouraged me to bring my own per
sonality to the cooking process and make every dish my own, which I am proud to say I did. I turned a complicated peas and paneer recipe into a delicious dish that I could whip up for fifty people in an hour and a half. I worked on perfecting my pau bhaji (a type of vegetarian sloppy joe) for over one year until it was a rich and complex stew of vegetables and spices that many devotees craved.
To my relief, and to the gastronomic delight of many of the other devotees, my formerly average cooking skills blossomed. I found it thrilling to toss a handful of mustard seeds into a pot of smoking hot oil and let them dance and pop as they turned from black to red and back to black, then toss in a handful of fresh grated ginger to “cool” the spices. As the spices sizzled in oil, the kitchen filled with the most tantalizing aromas. I began to receive compliments from Westerners and Indians alike. My newfound culinary proficiency bolstered my confidence—and gave me something to look forward to every week.
On the days I made the devotees happy by preparing delicious wholesome vegetarian meals, it almost felt like we were sctually a family.
30
Ashram Children
The Guru’s “Grandkids”
I HAD NEVER WANTED children of my own and, at first, did not appreciate living in such close proximity to the kids in the ashram.
When I first moved to Barsana Dham, it already housed eleven children between the ages of three and fourteen. When the ashram population reached its peak a few years later, there were sixteen children, plus extra kids visiting with their devotee parents. As children do, they were always running around, getting in the way, and making noise. They received the lion’s share of Swamiji’s attention, particularly at mealtimes. The kids usually would sit up close to him, huddled around his folding TV table. As he ate, he would often toss them little morsels, such as pieces of bread or carrot sticks. He called the kids his “grandchildren” and would often give them bear hugs. If there was more than one around, they’d often end up in a group hug.
